Semiconductor IP News and Trends Blog

What’s New in DisplayPort 2.0 – 20Gbps, 16K and much more…

The demand for higher resolution displays is exploding across the market segments from electronics like television, monitors, laptops, and smartphones to the emerging technologies like video and vision, automotive, and AR/VR. The bandwidth requirement for displays increases multi-fold with higher resolution which has been the main driver for development of the latest DisplayPort 2.0 specification by VESA.

The Synopsys Verification IP team has already been engaged with early adopters using this evolving specification since early 2019. This collaboration has helped accelerate the verification closure of the early adopters next generation Display designs ahead of their competition. In this blog, we will highlight what’s new in DisplayPort 2.0 specification, and provide insights from our experiences working with customers.

To meet industry requirements, this latest specification, DisplayPort 2.0, adds the following significant enhancements and new features:

• Higher speeds of 10Gbps, 13.5Gbps and 20Gbps
• More efficient 128b/132b encoding to improve the overall efficiency of the lanes
• Panel Replay feature to improve the power efficiency
• Support for the higher resolutions of 10K and 16K

The DisplayPort 2.0 specification remains compatible with previous versions, the first being over a decade old now. This new specification is also now compatible to USB Type-C, and Thunderbolt-3.

This standard adds a Panel Replay feature, borrowed from the Panel Self Refresh (PSR) feature of eDP standard, to improve the power efficiency. The feature helps to save system power when the displayed image remains static/same over several frames, or only a small portion of the frame is updated.

FEC is being made mandatory for DisplayPort 2.0, while it was optional in DisplayPort 1.4, ensuring error free transmission in high speed interfaces. Another point to note is that DisplayPort 1.4 has two different packetization methods for single and multi-streams (SST & MST modes), while DisplayPort 2.0 has a common packetization method for both single and multi-streams. DisplayPort 2.0 carries forward the DSC compression feature of DisplayPort 1.4 with which it can even cater to a 16K display.

DisplayPort 2.0 can work with the configurations listed below in USB Type-C via DisplayPort Alt mode, to allow simultaneous SuperSpeed USB data and video transmission:

• Three 4K displays @144Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Two 4Kx4K displays (for AR/VR headsets) @120Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Three QHD displays @120Hz and 24 bpp 4:4:4 (no compression)
• One 8K display @30Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (no compression)

Synopsys is the market leader in Verification IP for next generation Display technologies, delivering industry first VIPs for DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC 1.2, and HDMI 2.1 with HDCP 2.2. We have extended our leadership with the availability of customer-proven VIP for the latest VESA DisplayPort 2.0 specification.
For more information on Synopsys’ display and other VIP, please visit: www.synopsys.com/vip.

Stay tuned for our upcoming blogs on the verification challenges presented by updates to the DisplayPort specification including higher rates, topologies, compression, FEC, encoding & power efficiency. In the meantime, we encourage you to read our recent blogs and announcements:

• Connecting DisplayPort to Multiple Devices
• Unraveling the Topologies of DisplayPort 1.4/1.3
• Industry’s First DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC 1.2 VIP and Test Suite
• Novatek Adopts Synopsys’ Industry-First HDMI 2.1 with HDCP 2.2 Verification IP and Test Suite
• USB4: Higher Performance and Combined Data, Display, and Power

Authored by Thenmozhy Kaliyamurthy and Dinesh Siwal.

Thenmozhy Kaliyamurthy
Thenmozhy Kaliyamurthy has over 15 years of experience in the field of VLSI and is expert on front end design and verification. She is currently working at Synopsys as R&D Engineer Staff, architecting and leading development of Verification IPs. She has previously worked at Transwitch and Mindtree and started her career at Future Techno Designs. She has extensive knowledge and working experience on display protocols such as DisplayPort, HDMI and MHL.

Dinesh Kumar Siwal
Dinesh Silwal has over 20 years of experience in the software industry, including the last 8 years with Synopsys. He is currently a Sr. R&D Manager at Synopsys. He has been on several Verification IP teams including the Memory VIP and Display VIP teams.